Pallour
by countertime
Summary: Dark AU: A world where who we love defines us, and how we love breaks us.
1. faith

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**faith**

Marron doesn't walk into churches anymore. Like an American franchise, they advertise themselves so plainly that she can simply note the gothic flowing stone and walk calmly past. A part of her (tiny but unforgivable) wants to instead rail at the gates, at this god that would ask so much of her for so little.

_When she was younger, she dreamt of someone else. Of a girl whip thin but full of faith. Marron had faith too. But it shattered like a china doll and she cut herself trying to fix it. She is still bleeding._

Mostly, she cannot bear to see the cherubs, lined up and grinning down at her with vacant marble eyes. Little wings and half smiles that are echoed in Finn but do not bring up any fondness. She cannot bear it— these houses of god and mercy. She has seen angels, fallen and falling. There is no mercy to it.

_In every dream she is burning. _

Like ghosts they slip past the corner of her eye. Demons. Before they possess and become something corporal, something twisted and ugly, she sees them as they were. Bloody and beaten. The tips of wings and ethereal grace.

_And naïve young Marron had mistaken her fear for the girl's own. She sees the error of it now. Jeanne was happy to die, happier to raise phoenix like from the ashes, closer to her God. _

When Finn speaks of God, of his plan, there is no reverence in it. Only a twitching at her lips and a vacancy to her eyes. Not like Jeanne. Not like Jeanne at all.

And Marron knows, Finn doesn't have far to fall.

author note: just another romp into dark AU, trying to figure out how Marron would deal with any suspicion she had about Finn. maybe the beginnings of a longer fic.


	2. penance

**penance**

It's been too long since he's been human, he forgets the niceties sometimes. Shikaidou Hijiri forgets that she is still but a girl and that there is nothing of Jeanne in her.

_But he's more monster than man. _

While he was still a man, still grieving instead of cursing her for being so good to make him love her, he swore he would find her again. He realizes now that he should have joined her in heaven—done everything in his power to earn that rightful spot instead of burning the world as it had burned her.

_There is a fire in his soul that will not be put out. There was never any heaven for him. _

He disappeared (he teaches history and is only now learning how long) to let the decades wash over him, hoping time was balm enough. But Claude Noin is a soldier and he knows how to stand vigil.

_And he has mourned her every day of his life. _

Sometimes he forgets that there was anything other than this, this grief and this longing. Sometimes he thinks there was. And that is worse.

_Happiness is a wide eyed girl who saw the world as it was and dared to change it. _

When Noin looks at Marron, all he sees is Jeanne.


	3. benediction

**benediction**

Chiaki doesn't remember his mother. Not really. Only in the pained way his father looks at him can he grasp at what she must have been. How wholly his father fell to her. She is reflected in so many things that it is hard not to imagine her. Not to imagine himself missing her. And he wonders if he doesn't hate her a little for it.

_He thinks he loves her anyway. _

His father once told him that he had loved her before he had ever known her (he says this as he takes another woman to be his mother) and that he is glad to have a son that carries some part of her.

_From pictures he can see that he has her eyes. _

_From his memory he knows that his do not sparkle as hers did. _

Chiaki lets his old man act the fool. Get on with girl after girl, paint the hospital with ever prettier faces and emptier rumors. His father lies with every smile and it is sweeter than the truth.

_There is only a wreck of a man left and he is aching to pull the world down in with his lot._

Chiaki had balked when his father told him that he'd find the same. A girl that was more than a girl that he could love for what eternity was left in him. And when he met the girl, he saw what his mother must have been.

_And how much his father had lost._

And in that moment, he hadn't wanted the girl at all, he only wanted his father- whole and returned to him.


	4. mercy

**mercy**

For as long as anyone can remember, Zen had been sick. He could _feel_ it, a clawing cankerous thing that had slowly wasted his body while he could only mark the changes.

_But this is not his tragedy._

His parents had been ridiculously (foolishly) hopeful about his condition. They had spent a lifetime (his whole life) waiting for him to get better. And he does love them for it (despairs at it) but Zen is tired of the brave face and the sugared pops. And though he wishes he hadn't sent them away he is weighted with the understanding of his reality and their denial.

_But this is not his tragedy._

Zen isn't prone to bouts of philosophy or introspection and he has spent too many years with false bravado to recognize his own fear. Years of promising his mother that he'll get better (it won't ever get better) and even now he is falling in line with Marron's expectation that he is not ready to be done living.

_But his heart beat is borrowed._

And maybe he isn't ready to be done but he is so raw with his anger that there isn't much living to him and if he could only look his mother in the eye and beg her to let him go even if there is a chance (it's just that his heart is so heavy and he doesn't know how to come back from this) because he is so tired of fighting but he can't stop on his own.

_But hope-that feathered thing- so cruelly holds him in this dance._

Yet, in his heart, Zen knows that it's no longer his decision to make.

And he's a little glad.


	5. fealty

**fealty**

Access loves with his whole being. And though he has been on both ends of blades and blasé, he loves with a careless disregard for his own safety (it is a maniac affair, those of the heart).

And she was (everything) so wholly unaffected by him that he chased her until the charm of it had turned foolish.

_And he has been such a fool._

Her hair is like a temperate storm around her face that echo in her eyes and Access often finds himself wondering how he could read though her artifice so plainly and yet miss the punch line.

_The laughter is choking in his throat and _

Inside he is screaming for it to be untrue, what he reads so clearly in her moss green eyes. What she is asking him without words- they have seen gardens fall, yes, but the apple has rotted her though.

_And he loves her but he's holding his breath-_

But when Time is concerned, the clock is always counting down.


	6. fervor

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**[fervor]**

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If you asked Chiaki, fisticuff was too good of a word to be real- even in his often bizarre reality. It was violent in practice of course, one did not engage in fisticuffs and come out like roses- but fisticuffs, fisticuffs is the type of word you could get behind. You got beat, yah, but you were not beaten. Fisticuffs don't bring you down.

But no one asked Marron. She is in definition, a creature of faith. But there is only so much she can take on it. She has a mission- sacred maybe, necessary definitely- but she does not relish the fight. Behind all her caring there is duty. Jeanne's maybe, Finn's definitely, but Marron herself cannot haul it all onto her shoulders without stumbling.

Chiaki would take on Hiriji and Noin both if it could stop her from being so stupidly smitten with the two of them. As if it would make a damned bit of difference. She is so desperate to not be alone that she can't see that she has him, all of him.

But that is exactly the type of declaration that would have Marron balk and fight him all the way. Afterall, everyone she has ever loved has left her in the end.

_Chiaki wants to love her the right way; Marron is won over by kisses stolen in the night. _

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End file.
